Word: litmus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lesson for schoolchildren: Set everyone to giving the litmus test to everyone else, so that in private life teachers will think twice before criticizing and comparing, before saying what they believe...
...fall: "They are the truest interpretation of my philosophy. If anyone understands them, he understands me." In prose so immaculately manicured that only the polish is apparent, Santayana descends to the oblivion of limbo and seeks out his beloved, smooth-talking heroes: Socrates, Democritus, Alcibiades, Dionysius, Aristippus. The litmus with which he tests the worth of their ideas is The Stranger, a visiting earthly spirit who sounds suspiciously like a traveling Harvard professor...
...Litmus of History. Cooper comes to a conclusion that many Americans will find distasteful, and more will dispute: "This too had to be granted, that we were the creatures of the history into which we were born. Had the seventy million Germans been born in America, they would have lived out their lives drinking soda pop. And had our nation of Americans been Germans, Andrew Cooper among them, we would have divided just as inevitably into Gestapomen and victims, a few of us heroes. It was history which exposed or concealed our capacities for brutality, heroism or cowardice. . . . History...
...whistle, Captain Midnight's code ring, a compass ring for Shredded Wheat, a radar ring for Peter Pan Peanut Butter) for the major users of box-top premiums. Latest to come off the top-secret list: a "weather ring" for B. F. Goodrich. (A tiny sheet of litmus paper beneath a plastic lens turns pink in rainy weather, blue in fair...
Since Congress put the pressure on it to boot out Communists, the State Department had filtered 3,000 of its employes through its litmus papers for traces of red. Results by last week: 40 men and women had been fired for having what State called "close connections or involvements with foreign governments...